At last, my work on building the Duskull Gijinka is done. This is my first ever attempt at creating a gijinka completely on my own. I have never sewed anything together in my life. The needle and thread donated to me by my girlfriend did not come with any instructions. Fortunately, I had found a lot of articles on the internet to at least figure out some sort of pattern. The end result is very cute, though I attribute that more to the model than to the costume. Hit the bump for all the details on how this was made.

[Before I got into any detail about this gijinka project, I have to thank my wonderful girlfriend Weiting for her help in modeling this costume. She had a lot of patience and persevered through some painful designs.]

There was no pattern to work from when building this costume. I borrowed gnacissej’s instructions on crafster.org as my guide. For the most part, I followed her suggestions, but there were a few parts where I differed.

1st. She recommended cutting 5 different pieces to make the back, the two-pieces of the front that would zip, and then the sleeves. I realized too late that I wasn’t going to have a zipper for this, so I instead cut two identical pieces, front and back. These pieces were also made a little longer to make it look like one piece of clothing.

Problems: Forget that the whole thing was mistakingly done on a futon and not a hard surface, the construction of these two pieces was rough work. I essentially cut two back pieces out, which didn’t account for the model’s body shape. While it fit around her petite waist nicely, the rest of the fabric was stretched because it wasn’t properly measured for width. When accounting for bust and hips, remember to account for that in the fabric’s design. Unfortunately for the model, the result was very uncomfortable but we had to keep using it because I had a limited amount of fabric.

2nd: I didn’t measure the sleeves right either. The suggestions made in the crafster piece didn’t even come close to covering the arms. The two pieces cut were used as the right sleeve instead and a whole new, larger piece was used to craft the left sleeve.

Problems: Sewing the sleeve to cover the seam was an unbelievable chore. Though, it’s worth it for the look of the left sleeve. The right sleeve ended up looking like junk so I’d recommend just going with one piece of fabric as the sleeve. Harder to sew but looks better. Also, there should be some sort of lining on the end of the sleeve to give it that hoodie/sweatshirt weight.

3rd: Oh that hood! The craftster piece recommended two pieces and to make sure there was lining too. No lining was available so we worked with what we had. The seam was sewn on the inside of the top of the hood to be covered.

Problems: Couldn’t be angrier with the hood. Two pieces doesn’t look right at all. In fact, poor thing, the model looks like one of those monks from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

or a little bit like this infamous video game box art

courtesy alatest.com

And thus…here’s the final costume.

It may sound like I’m upset with it but I’m not. I’ve never sewn anything or constructed a gijinka from scratch before in my life. It was agonizing sitting there with the needle and thread trying not to lose patience. But there were some points where I just felt a kind of zen-moment. I was in the zone and enjoying the fact that I was doing what real cosplayers do, creating something from scratch. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Have I learned anything? Absolutely!! Plus, my intention was merely to make a mock-up. Find out what worked and then do something real with it.

Oh, but I wouldn’t be a great blogger if I didn’t give you all something in return for reading this. Here’s a photoshopped image of my recommendations for the pattern for this costume. Art skills still pending. Enjoy!